EPA Recognizes Allegheny College for Largest Green Power Use Among NCAC Schools

April 26, 2016 — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has recognized Allegheny College as a 2015-16 Individual Conference Champion of the College & University Green Power Challenge for using more green power than any other school in the North Coast Athletic Conference. Allegheny has taken top honors for the past five years.

Since April 2006, EPA’s Green Power Partnership has tracked and recognized the collegiate athletic conferences with the highest combined green power use within the program. The Individual Conference Champion Award recognizes the school that has the largest individual use of green power within a qualifying conference.

Allegheny College beat its conference rivals by using nearly 15 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of green power, representing 100 percent of the school’s annual electricity usage. Allegheny College is buying renewable energy certificates (RECs) from Constellation NewEnergy. In addition, Allegheny College is generating green power from an on-site renewable energy system using solar resources, demonstrating a proactive choice to switch away from traditional sources of electricity generation and support cleaner renewable energy alternatives.

Allegheny’s commitment to on-campus renewables and the purchase of RECs halves the campus’s carbon footprint and advances progress toward the college’s goal of achieving climate neutrality by the year 2020.

According to the U.S. EPA, Allegheny College’s green power use of nearly 15 million kWh is equivalent to the electricity use of nearly 1,400 average American homes annually.

Green power is zero-emissions electricity that is generated from environmentally preferable renewable resources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, eligible biogas, biomass and low-impact hydro. Using green power helps accelerate the development of new renewable energy capacity nationwide and helps users reduce their carbon footprints.